• Start your training the moment your puppy comes home.
• Always give your dog a treat when you call him to you.
• Train before meals or when your dog is relaxed
• Your german shepherd puppy was bred for extreme trainability so limit your training to under 5 minutes (short and sweet).
• A daily routine builds good learning habits.
• Always end on a high note, when the puppy has done what you asked right.
• Do not overtrain. Your puppy will lose interest and not retain what it did learn.
• Praise, praise, praise.
• Training up until a year of age is all motivational. We start with food. Vienna hot dogs cut in little pieces. There are lost of training treats available at pet markets. Just make sure that whatever you do get it must be in tiny pieces for the training or your dog will be so busy eating the biscuit that you won’t have time for the training. You want your puppy to quickly eat the treat and immediately after look at you for more.
• Hold your treat up by your face so that the puppy will learn to look you in the eye. If you don’t have your puppies attention your puppy will not learn.
• Always use a quiet area with few distraction or interruptions.
• Only one person at a time should train. Children should always be supervised by a knowledgeable adult.
• Consistancy counts. I will spend 2 weeks alone on sit. Twice a day for a few minutes. After the puppy is good with the sit, I will turn my back, call the pup and generally the puppy will come around to my front and sit directly infront of me.
• Stay and down are negative commands and I generally don’t work on them until the dog is older. However you can teach the down easily with food so it is not associated with negative training.
• Heeling can be taught by holding a treat/toy infront of the dogs face as he walks on the left side of you. The dog will associate you with food and keep his eyes on you instead of everything else that is out there.
• Never hit or shout at your dog for not obeying a command.
• Harsh corrections can result in fear and aggression – both are counter productive to learning.
• If your dog misbehaves, he should be reprimanded consistenly and immediately. A firm, verbal rebuke is enough. Don’t rebuke your dog for doing something you didn’t see at the moment.

Teaching sit:

Hold the treat so the dog looks up to get it. As the dog tips its head up it will they will automatically sit. Consistency of working this way with the sit will produce the response on command.

Teaching down:

Command your dog to ‘sit’, then sit down in front of him. Hold a small piece of food in front of his nose. As you command ‘down’, move the food down to the ground so his nose follows it. If he need help, put.
Your hand on his shoulders and guide them down. When he is lying down, praise him and give him the treat. You can also push the treat between your puppy’s front legs, as he tried to follow it his back end will slide into a down position. Praise him and give him the reward.

Teaching (hear) come:

From the very first day you bring your puppy into the house he should be given a treat every time you call him to you. After your puppy learns the sit you can combine the ‘come’ with the ‘sit’ and then give the treat/reward. And always lots of praise and excitement when your dog comes to you. Never, never call your dog to you for punishment. Never use his name negatively. If you instill in your dogs from day one that it is exciting and rewarding to come to you he will sail through his teenage stage eagerly wanting to please you. This could also save your dogs life to know that he is 100% on the recall.
I recommend once you have these commands working smoothly with your dog that you join a local obedience club and work on putting all of this together in a routine so you can be a team. This is usually after the teenage stay and about 13 – 14 months of age.

Create training:

We create train all puppies from the day that they are weaned. My advice to you when you start is to put the puppy in the crate and then take the whole family to the movies so you won’t have to listen to him throw a temper tantrum. They get use to it quickly. Do not take the puppy out if he is throwing fit. Once your puppy gets use to it you will be able to tell when he has to go to the bathroom…his cry will be much different.